Various techniques are known for decoration of flat or curved surfaces, such as furniture surfaces or floors or profiles, sheets and similar product, e.g. designed for assembly of door and window products.
Prior art techniques generally require one or more decorative layers, consisting of paints or other pigmented liquids, to be laid on the surface to be decorated.
These layers are distributed over the surface to be decorated either uniformly or with predetermined patterns. The various overlapped layers define the final decorative pattern.
Furthermore, an initial adhesive layer, or primer, may be applied to the surface to be decorated, to facilitate stable connection of the decorative layers thereto.
Likewise, a varnish or other transparent material may be applied above the decorative layers, with the purpose of finishing and protecting the decorative layers.
Typically, in prior art, the various layers are applied one above the other directly on the surface to be decorated, from the adhesive layer through all decorative layers proper.
Accordingly, the line shall have a number of workstations for laying the layers in the predetermined order.
Otherwise, a single workstation, typically the decorating station may be used for laying two or more layers, but still in sequential order.
In any case, the surface to be decorated is required to be submitted to several machine steps, each involving a time for applying and drying the deposited layer, thereby excessively increasing the overall process time.
Furthermore, if a single decorating station is used for depositing the various decorative layers, the decorated product must be picked up from the exit of such station and carried back to the entry thereof.
This requires particular work and sufficient spaces, thereby adding complexity to the process and increasing the overall space requirements for the system.
A further drawback of all prior art solutions is that the multilayer coating is applied to the surface to be decorated at the same time as it is formed.
Therefore, the presence of the decorated product is always required, which causes an increase of the overall costs.
Also, in case of errors in layer production, defects will be reflected on the product, which will have to be discarded or reprocessed.